<\/p>\n
When celebrities lend their voices to puppets or animated characters, it can be a marketing boon for the studio. But it can also be a distraction. Somewhere in the back of your mind, your suspension of disbelief might have taken a knock because your brain knows that Mario is actually Chris Pratt<\/a>, or Zendaya is Meechee. With no celebrity voice to distract from Project Hail Mary\u2019s material, we don\u2019t separate newcomer Ortiz from Rocky, and, as a result, we\u2019re deeply affected by Rocky\u2019s upsetting backstory, his dreams of reuniting with his mate, and the harm he suffers after saving Grace from certain death.<\/p>\n Social media has been awash with posts from people attending Project Hail Mary screenings, admitting they openly wept about the possible fate of a character who doesn\u2019t even have a humanoid or animal face, and that\u2019s down to the extraordinary puppeteering and voice work behind Rocky, who seems just as real as Gosling himself. Having been physically on set with the Barbie<\/a> actor as he puppeteered, Ortiz\u2019s delivery is heartfelt and touching, even when his lines end with \u201cquestion\u201d or \u201cstatement,\u201d as the computer\u2019s translation of the alien\u2019s context dictates.<\/p>\n It takes you back to the time when artists like Jim Henson and Frank Oz would more regularly voice big characters rather than A-list actors, which is no accident \u2014 Rocky was designed by Jim Henson\u2019s Creature Shop alum Neal Scanlan, and his VFX company built all the Rocky puppets in Project Hail Mary. Scanlan and Ortiz worked together throughout the film\u2019s production to bring Rocky to life onscreen, and Ortiz told Inverse<\/a> that he initially asked Neal for directions. \u201cHe said, \u2018No, no, no, James. Think of it like this: You\u2019re Frank Oz, and I\u2019m making Yoda for you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.denofgeek.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When celebrities lend their voices to puppets or animated characters, it can be a marketing boon for the studio. But it can also be a distraction. Somewhere in the back of your mind, your suspension of disbelief might have taken a knock because your brain knows that Mario is actually Chris Pratt, or Zendaya is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2341645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2341644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Rockys-Voice-Decision-Makes-Project-Hail-Mary-Even-More-Brilliant.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2341644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2341644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2341644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2341646,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2341644\/revisions\/2341646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2341645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2341644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2341644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2341644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}